


Northern Soul

by feroxargentea



Category: Northern Exposure
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27593611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: Everyone needs a place to call home.
Relationships: Joel Fleischman/Maggie O'Connell
Comments: 29
Kudos: 26
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Northern Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [desperately_human](https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperately_human/gifts).



> For desperately_human, who asked for a bittersweet story about Joel and his journey.   
> Thank you to my lovely betas: cj2017, alltoseek and alcyone301.

* * *

**Chris in the Morning on KBHR Radio, 570 AM**

_“…and that was Sinatra with Cole Porter classic_ I’ve Got You Under My Skin.

_“It’s a glorious fall day up here in Cicely, Alaska. Hope you’re all out in the sunshine, stocking up on that good ol’ vitamin D before the big freeze. The Arrowhead County Knitters are whipping up winter woolens again for those in need, so Ruth-Anne says if you’ve got any yarn going spare, drop it by the store and she’ll pass it on._

_“Shout out to Dr. Joel Fleischman, who’s got a brand new box of blood-testing kits from Anchorage and is just itching to try ’em out. So come on down to his new Health Stand opposite the Brick any day this week to pick up your free pedometer and maybe make an appointment for a health check while you’re there. Pulse, blood pressure, and blood sugar tests are all up for grabs. Sounds good to me._

_“This one’s for you, Joel.”_

[Music plays: _Too Much on My Heart_ by the Statler Brothers.]

* * *

Joel took a step back and squinted at the folding tables where he’d laid out all his pamphlets and freebies.

“Left a bit,” he said.

Marilyn obediently moved the stack of information leaflets a fraction of an inch to the left.

“Right a bit.” He frowned at them. “No, left a bit. There.” He looked up and caught her expression. “What? You don’t like it?”

She shrugged. “It’s in the wrong place.”

“The leaflets?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“All of it.”

“We talked about this, Marilyn!” Joel spread his arms wide, gesturing at the empty lot they’d set the tables up in. “It’s all about the foot traffic. You know what the three most important factors in retail are? Location, location, location. We got a prime spot here, in the center of town, opposite the clinic, right across from the Brick. Everyone will see it. It’s perfect.”

Marilyn raised one eyebrow infinitesimally.

“Hey, I’m not moving it now,” Joel said. “Give it a few hours and people will be flocking to it. You’ll see.”

* * *

People did flock, by Cicely standards anyway. Business slowed again around noon, though, and Joel was just considering taking a break when he saw Maggie O’Connell’s pickup pull in. She jumped out, retrieved a cardboard box from the seat, and came over to the stall.

“Another package from Anchorage for you,” she said, passing it over. “Even heavier this time. More blood tests?”

Joel stashed it under the tables and straightened up again. “Yup. I’m gonna need ’em, too. I got people lining up six-deep for health checks.” He glanced at the empty street on either side. “And before you make some wisecrack, no, there’s no one here now, but that’s only because they’re all at the Brick for lunch. They’ll be back.”

Maggie picked up one of the pedometers, poked it, and returned it to the pile. “‘If you build it, they will come,’ huh?”

“Scoff all you want, O’Connell, but some people actually give a damn about public outreach programs.”

“Sure. I mean, I’m guessing you need the business.”

“Hey, I’m doing myself out of a job here!” he said, stung. “Well, not me, but whichever poor schmuck gets stuck with it once I’m gone. If people round here took care of themselves, in ten, twenty years’ time there’d be nothing left to treat but…but…chainsaw accidents and all the other stupid ways they find to injure themselves when they live hundreds of miles from the nearest ER.”

“So you’re a philanthropist now? I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Joel glanced sidelong at her, biting back a smile. She was wearing some sort of flowery peasant skirt he hadn’t seen before, along with a sweater that looked like a sheep had run amok in a dye factory. He could never figure out how she made outfits like that look _good._

“Hey, just because this place hasn’t moved on in a hundred years doesn’t mean it can’t,” he said. “I’m trying to shake things up here, jolt people out of their tracks before they die of inertia.”

“See, that’s what I don’t get about you, Fleischman: what gives you the right to be so unbelievably patronizing.”

He smirked at her. “A medical degree from Columbia University, plus a residency at Beth Zion.”

She rolled her eyes and turned to go.

“Hey, wait, uh, you know Cicely pretty well, right?” he said. “I mean, you’ve been around a while.”

She paused, her expression wary. “I guess.”

“So, you know anything about this place?” he asked, gesturing at the space around the stand.

“Here? It’s an empty lot. There’s not much to know.”

“So there’s no reason why I shouldn’t use it?”

“Uh, no one’s going to charge you rent, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Nah, it’s just that Marilyn was weird about it. She said it was the wrong place.”

“Well, no one else ever uses it, as far as I know.” Maggie picked up one of the pedometers again and slipped it into her pocket. “Look, I have to go. I’ve got an urgent delivery for Holling.”

“Okay, okay.” He watched her head across the street and then yelled after her, “Hey, any time you want a Well Woman check…”

She spun on her heel, the ridiculous skirt billowing out around her. “In your dreams, Fleischman.”

He laughed and raised his face to the bright fall sunshine. The weather was clear, life was good, and his dreams were going to be just fine.

* * *

Joel got through morning clinic next day with his spirits still high. His boxes of leaflets and handouts, carefully packed up and brought into the office for safekeeping overnight, were lighter than they had been; at least thirty people had stopped by his stall the previous afternoon. Some of them had only wanted to talk about the weather or remind him about the upcoming film festival, but a surprising number had promised to make appointments for health checks. If even a fraction of them kept their promises, it had been time well spent.

Even the sight of Rachel Donnermayer waiting in the front office again with her pet chihuahua failed to dampen Joel’s mood. After three years in Cicely, he’d given up pointing out to the townsfolk that he was a doctor, not a vet. In their eyes, a doctor was better than nothing, after all. Maybe he should paint that on a sign, nail it above the clinic door.

“Tyson got the toothache again?” he asked cheerfully, scooping up the chihuahua.

“He broke into the toffee apples,” Rachel admitted.

Joel narrowed his eyes at the little beast and tipped it sideways, hefting a tongue depressor in his other hand. The light from the window caught the dog’s tiny incisors as it bared them at him.

“Hey,” he said. Then, as he glanced out of the window and noticed the scene beyond, “Hey! Hey, _no!”_

He was out the front door and halfway down the street before Rachel caught up with him.

“You see that?” he yelled, wheeling round, his stethoscope flapping against his chest. He gestured with the tongue depressor at the empty lot, where his folding tables lay strewn across the ground, their legs knocked from under them.

Rachel grabbed Tyson off him indignantly.

“Sorry,” he said, “I just—”

She quelled him with a glare and stomped off down the road, cradling the little dog. For a couple of seconds he watched her go, before his gaze was drawn back to the wreckage of his stall.

“What the…?” he began. Then he turned back toward the clinic. “Marilyn! Marilyn! I need a hand here!”

* * *

Marilyn didn’t say “I told you so.”

She didn’t say it the first time, instead helping him silently to resurrect the stall and lay out the leaflets.

She didn’t say it the second time, when he jogged into work early in the morning with a flashlight and found all the tables shoved aside again as if by a giant hand. He gritted his teeth and hauled them back into place by himself, nearly putting his back out in the process. He wasn’t going to be defeated by stupid Alaskan vandals.

She didn’t say it the third time it happened, or the fourth.

Finally he threw up his hands. “So it’s the wrong place. _Why_ is it the wrong place? Does someone own it? Some dog-in-a-manger who doesn’t use it but doesn’t want me using it either?”

Marilyn cocked her head a fraction. “It’s because it’s between the Brick and the old graveyard.”

Joel stared at her, and then at the Brick, and then across the empty lot, beyond which he could just make out the edge of the cemetery.

“So?” he said.

“It’s in the path of the spirits.”

“Spirits? What, is that a…a Native American thing?”

She shook her head.

“What, then?” He looked round again at the waste ground, with its sparse scattering of trees. No totem poles or sacred markings that he could see.

Marilyn shrugged and levered one of the tables back into position.

“Okay, fine,” Joel said. “Whoever’s doing this, they’re doing it at night. So if we use this place during the day but take it all down at dusk, whatever voodoo-hoodoo game they’re playing at should stop. Right?”

That got him another shrug.

“Fine,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do. Keep an eye on the stall for half an hour, okay? I’m gonna go grab some lunch.”

* * *

Maybe it was the fresh air, or maybe it was the work of dragging tables around, but Joel was starving. Inside the Brick, he found Holling busily cracking eggs into a giant bowl, while Shelly peeled a heap of garlic, her hands clad in bright yellow rubber gloves.

“Mooseburger, Joel?” Holling asked, sweeping a pile of eggshells into the trash can. “I got some going on the grill. Be right with you.”

“Thanks, Holling.” Joel took a seat at the bar. “Hey, Shelly. You, uh, got a sudden thing for garlic?”

She pushed her hair back with one gloved hand, leaving a speck of papery garlic skin on her cheek. “Hi, Dr. Fleischman! We’re trying out a new set of dips. Holling’s making mayo from scratch, and I’m making ayel…aylo…aylelli.”

“Aioli?”

“Right! We had a whole crate of garlic bulbs shipped over from Anchorage special.”

“Huh. That’s…different.”

“You should try it, it’s real good,” she said, her eyes wide with conviction. “Real good for you, too.”

“Um, as a medical doctor, I’m pretty sure nothing with that much oil and salt in it could be described as good for you, Shelly.”

“Garlic is, though! I saw this documentary about it on TV.”

“Yeah, but—”

He broke off as Holling reappeared with a loaded plate.

“One medium mooseburger with our very own garlic dip,” Holling said, handing it to him. “Enjoy.”

“See, Shelly, once you add that much oil”—Joel took a bite of the burger—“you, uh…oh wow. _Wow._ This is _amazing!”_

Shelly beamed at him. “Told you it was good.”

Joel ate his way through the burger in silence, reaching for more dip at intervals. It wasn’t three-Michelin-stars good, maybe, but it beat anything else he’d had in Alaska. Finally he sat back with a sigh.

“That was something else. Hey, Holling, can I ask you something?”

Holling ran a cloth along the bar. “Go ahead, Joel.”

Joel twirled a french fry in his leftover aioli. “So, you’ve probably seen me on the health stall, over the road—I’ve been out there all week, doing this public outreach thing with a stand and leaflets and everything—and every night someone’s been knocking my tables over. I mean, not just knocking them over but flattening them, whammo, like they hit them with a pickup truck or something. You know why anyone would do that?”

“That stall over there? In the empty lot?”

“Yeah. Marilyn said it’s spirits doing it. Like, ghosts or something. Which is ridiculous, right?”

Holling gave him a searching look. “You really wanna know?”

“Yeah, I really wanna know!”

“Come on outside, then.”

Joel wiped his plate clean with his last french fry and followed Holling and Shelly out the Brick’s front door, into the fresh, cold air.

Holling pointed past the stall. “See that graveyard, way over yonder? There’s an old gravestone right in the middle that commemorates the founder of this town.”

“Cicely?” Joel said. “Yeah, Maurice told me about her once. A women’s libber, right? She came here to try and set up some sort of hippie paradise.”

“That’s one way of putting it. Maybe you also know that she died defending this town, and that her death broke her companion Roslyn’s heart. Nobody’s exactly sure what happened to Roslyn after that. Some say she ended her days far away in Spain, fighting the fascists.”

“Okay. So?”

“So,” Holling said, “when she was last seen leaving town, she was heading east. Now, I don’t know much about the spirit world, but they say that at this time of year the dead like to visit each other, just like they did when they were living. And if anyone is foolish enough to put anything in their path…” He shrugged. “Well, there’s a reason nobody ever built on that particular piece of land.”

Joel scoffed. Then he noticed Holling’s expression. “Come on! Are you serious?”

“Holling’s the bravest guy in the whole wide world,” Shelly broke in, taking Holling’s arm. “He’s not scared of anything—bears, wolves, even spiders—but the last week in October, we bolt the doors and stay inside.”

“I don’t know about brave,” Holling said. “I’ve faced down Jesse the bear, I’ve crossed the river in spate to rescue a stranded calf, I’ve even shared a kitchen with Adam, but I am not about to stand between Roslyn and Cicely.” He patted Joel on the shoulder. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Joel, I have a crate of garlic to peel.”

* * *

Before heading back to the health stand, Joel stopped by the store to pick up his mail.

“Hey, uh, you know anything about ghosts?” he asked Ruth-Anne, as she handed over his out-of-date _New Yorker_ magazines and mail-order catalogs.

“Well, that depends, Joel. Any ghosts in particular?”

“Local ones. Things that people round here might believe in.”

Ruth-Anne went to the back of the store, where a few shelves of dog-eared books constituted the town library.

“Here we are,” she said, extracting a slim volume. “ _Mythology and Folklore of Arrowhead County._ It’s mostly about Native American beliefs, of course, but there have been a few other ghost sightings over the years.”

“So you think they’re real?”

“Oh no,” she said firmly.

“No? How come?”

“Do _you?”_

“No, I’m just curious,” he said. “I mean, not that I’m giving it credence or anything, but half the town seems to think they’re the real deal. So what do you think it is? Suggestibility? Hallucinations? Mass hysteria?”

“Well, I don’t know about that, Joel, I’m not the doctor here. But I’ve spent more years on this Earth than I care to think about—the last thirty of them right here in Cicely—and I’ve never seen a ghost.” She paused. “Then again, until yesterday I’d never seen a man in a full surgical gown run down Main Street holding a chihuahua, either.”

“I had my good shirt on,” Joel said defensively. “I didn’t want to get tooth marks in it.”

Ruth-Anne raised an eyebrow. “Here you go, Joel,” she said, passing him the book. “It’s due back in two weeks. Good luck with the ghost hunting.”

* * *

“You know what, O’Connell, I’ll prove it to you,” Joel said. “I’ll _prove_ the ghost is a myth. I’m gonna lie in wait and catch whoever’s doing this, and I can guarantee you one hundred percent that they’ll be alive, with a pulse and everything.”

Maggie snorted. “Yeah, right, you and your medical tests. You _look,_ Fleischman, but you don’t _see.”_

“What’s that supposed to mean? For your information, I had my eyesight checked by one of the best ophthalmologists in New York just before I came here, and my long-distance visual acuity happens to be excellent.”

“It’s not your eyes that’s the issue, it’s your brain. Or what passes for a brain.”

“Very funny.”

She grinned at him. “It’s true, though. You wouldn’t see Roslyn’s ghost if it was right in front of your nose.”

“Why, because I’m—what? A doctor? A guy? An outsider? Ghosts don’t like anyone whose family hasn’t been here for the last sixteen generations? Because in case you haven’t noticed, Miss Grosse Pointe Country Club, I’m not the only one around here from the lower forty-eight.”

Maggie shoved her hands into her pockets and scuffed one boot-toe in the dirt. “It’s not that, it’s…”

“What?”

She shrugged. “Forget it.”

“Look, I’m actually willing to try something here, O’Connell. I’m willing to waste twelve hours or more of my valuable time, not to mention compromise my personal safety and lose most of my body heat, just to obtain enough empirical evidence to prove this thing one way or another. So before you call me judgmental, maybe you should take a long, hard look at your own prejudices.”

She threw up her hands. “Okay, fine! Twelve hours would make it,” she checked her watch, “six a.m. You stay in the graveyard till six a.m., and we’ll call it quits.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

Joel watched her stomp off towards her pickup, and then shoved his own hands into his pockets. Six a.m. It was going to be a long, cold night.

* * *

Joel woke suddenly, haunted by the sudden scent of coffee. Fresh coffee, hot and fragrant, its steam tickling his nose and tantalizing his taste buds.

He blinked again and opened one eye fully. Maggie was crouched next to him in a fluffy coat and hat, holding a mug of coffee right under his nose.

“Morning,” she said.

He extracted his hands from the depths of his parka, wrapped them round the mug, and took a long swig.

“Morning,” he muttered.

She nodded at Cicely’s gravestone, a few feet from where he was sitting. “So, did you see the ghost?”

He took another gulp of coffee, swallowed, and exhaled hard, his breath a cloud of steam in the dawn air. “Nope.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.” He uncurled his legs slowly and painfully, his joints aching with the cold. “I sat here all night and no one showed.”

“Huh.”

“What? I’m telling you, O’Connell, nothing happened. Nothing, nada, zip.”

“That’s funny,” she said, “because I’m pretty sure those weren’t there last night.”

He looked over at where she was pointing. A bouquet of fresh foliage lay on the frost-whitened grass of Cicely’s grave, its leaves interspersed with the jewel-like fruits of crowberries.

“Hey!” he said, rubbing his eyes in bewilderment. “How’d they get there?”

“Um, aren’t you supposed to know? That’s kind of the point.”

“But I was awake the whole night! I was checking my watch, I saw every hour! There was no one here!”

She tugged the corner of his waterproof groundsheet out and sat down on it, her body warm against his.

“Well, you finished with the health stall anyway, right?” she asked. “You were only going to do it for one week.”

“This time round, yeah. But in the future, maybe…” He trailed off, unsure where that sentence was going. When he’d come up with his grand plans to improve the town’s health, when he’d imagined Cicely’s future doctor grumbling about stubbed toes and sniffles and wishing for a few good old-fashioned heart attacks, he’d been thinking of the doctor as some other guy. He’d been getting less and less sure of that by the day.

A breeze danced across the graveyard, stirring the last few leaves on the trees and ruffling Cicely’s bouquet. _Ghosts,_ for goodness’ sake. The very idea was ludicrous. But in spite of all his science and skepticism, he knew in his heart that he wanted it to be true. He wanted to believe that an attachment—to a person, to a place, or just to an idea—could be so strong that it could overcome reason, maybe even outlast life itself.

He gazed out across the gravestones to the town beyond, with its scattering of weather-beaten stores, its deserted roads, its single stop light blinking endlessly as it swayed above the intersection.

“So this is it, huh?” he said.

Maggie tucked her arm into his. “This is what?”

“If I stay here,” he said, “this is all I get. I’ll never have state-of-the-art facilities to work in. I’ll never get to do cutting-edge research. I’ll never have operations named after me. I’ll never earn enough to retire early and spend my days at the country club—assuming I could even find a country club within a thousand miles of this godforsaken place, which I’ll never be able to do.”

Maggie leaned into him. “Think you could live with that?”

“I don’t know.” He pulled his coat tighter and blinked round at the frost-rimed trees. “Maybe. God, it’s freezing out here.”

“It’s October, it’s supposed to be freezing.” She nudged his arm. “Hey, you know what I want? Pancakes. You want pancakes?”

He couldn’t help smiling back at her. “Are you cooking?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay, then.”

Maggie got to her feet. “Come on, Fleischman,” she said, holding out her mittened hand. “Time to come home.”

* * *

**Chris in the Morning on KBHR Radio, 570 AM**

_“And there go Dr. Joel Fleischman and Maggie O’Connell, walking down Main Street hand in hand. Ah, young love, long may it bloom._

_“Speaking of blooming, Marilyn at the clinic said to let you all know that appointments for health checks are booked up a full three weeks ahead, and they’re waiting on a new delivery of test kits from Anchorage. Whoo, sounds like the health stall was a hit! They’re still taking names, though, so give her a call and get those arteries checked out._

_“On a different note, it’s Pig-Out Night at the Brick, all this week and through till the fifth. Holling says come on down and try the Mooseburger and Aioli special before Tuesday, and he’ll throw in fries and a side of onion rings for free. Mmm-mmm, fill those arteries right back up! The good and the bad, the yin and the yang, it’s the balance of life.”_

[Rustle of notes being put aside]

_“Thinking about blood now, and it’s a funny thing. It’s thicker than water, it’s tainted, it will out. Some folks say it’s your bloodline that makes you who you are: rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief. Then again, scientists tell us every one of us makes two million new blood cells per second, and the oldest red blood cells in your body are only four months old. So while I might have started this earthly path of mine way back in West Virginia, every drop in my veins was made right here in Cicely, Alaska. Everything old is new again, huh?_

_“You know, back on the homestead, folks used to say the Stevens family had bad blood. If I went down to Dr. Fleischman’s clinic for a test, I wonder what it would say about me. Would it tell me who I am? Would it tell me where I’m going? Would it run a full background check on me: Chris Stevens, age thirty, grand theft auto, mildly hypertensive? Or maybe the only thing it knows about me is what I ate for dinner last week._

_“As my Uncle Roy Bower used to say, the only thing we know for sure is we don’t know nothin’ yet. Food for thought.”_

[A crackle, and then music: Buddy Holly, _Heartbeat._ ]

_“This one’s for Joel and Maggie. Take care, Cicelians, and don’t let the ghosts and ghoulies bite. This is Chris in the Morning on KBHR radio, signing out.”_


End file.
